Dark Places
by Valdryfor
Summary: Your childhood is as a dream. You are made of Legion stock now, melted and reforged, trained to do as you are commanded. This is a journey straight into darkness, and you excel at it the darker it gets. (Character study on Vulpes Inculta.)
1. Chapter 1

There is a dark place where men go at times.

For some, it begins when you are eight years old, and there is blood on the hide tent you used to sleep in. You want to call out for your father but feel as if he will not hear you. A man in deep crimson crouches next to you and offers his hand.

"Come willingly," he says, "or be buried next to your savage whore of a mother, whichever one she is."

Everything is different. The food you eat. The words you are meant to use. They are foreign and unfamiliar to the ear and on the tongue, but when you say it better than the child next to you, a man in a large headdress smiles.

The clothes are stifling, and hot, and itchy. Shoes feel heavy on your feet. At night, you hear some of the others crying quietly into their pillows. They are from other places. One was from the tribe upriver that used to harass your cattle. When you sleep, you hear the shaman singing in the old tongue.

Without needing to be told, you know not to cry when another boy splits your brow open with a club in the practice arena. He is a good year or two older, taller, wider. The blood runs into your left eye, and the instructor does not tell him to stop. Instead, he tells the boy to crush your skull.

He hits you again, and you catch yourself on the arid ground by your palm. Your fingers dig in and a moment later you've thrown sand in his eyes, and use the moment he's covered them to deliver your fist into his throat. You do not hear the instructor say a word, and he does not tell you to desist, so you pull the club from the boy's hands and bring it down on his knee. The second blow shatters it.

"Stop." The voice holds no concern for the whimpering boy or his lame leg and aching throat. "Drop the weapon." It falls from your hand.

Before, they called you–like the rest of the tribal captures–savage boy. Now they call you something that they say means savage fox.

When you are fifteen, your hand is comfortable around the grip of a machete. Your muscles seem honed so very perfectly for swinging the weapon. Your eyes are sharp and watchful, your mind active and spinning with the details of events around you. So many boys have died in the training camp. You no longer remember their names, if they'd even been given one yet.

Each time one of them falls and refuses to get up, and lies drooling in the sand, the rest are made to kick him. If the instructor does not feel as if you kicked him hard enough, you are whipped. You have never been whipped. By the time it is over, the beaten ones–their stomachs turn a shocking violet and many stop breathing in the night. At dawn, everyone who shares the tent has to carry the corpse outside camp and bury it.

After the first time, it becomes easier. After many more, you find yourself watching the corpses slowly disappear under layer upon layer of dirt, and you know you will not lie down.

By the time you have been raised up from fighting your fellow legionaries to fighting your enemies, you are so used to death that you feel nothing when the young men around you are catching bullets in the thighs, bellies, and heads as you charge the line with nothing but a machete.

When you plant your blade into the shoulder of a boy not so much older than yourself, it feels like sinking it into a hock of meat. Later, you will realize you recognize the feeling from being taught to butcher brahmin as a child. A man had held his hand over yours and showed you how to grip the blade. Maybe it was your father–you cannot remember, but you push the thought from your head.

The boy meets your eyes for a brief moment. He looks scared. You do not feel scared. You do not feel anything. You tear your blade from him, let him fall, and move onto the next. Many have died already. You were not one of them.

Your legs are shaking from fatigue when you finally crouch by a fire after the attack, and you fall on your knees to rest them. There is blood on your face, and you can taste the metallic tang of it along with the salt from your sweat as it all drips down over your lips. There are many less boys that go to sleep in the tents than had woken up in them that morning.

The ache in your muscles drags you into sleep as soon as you've lain on your cot. You sleep, deeply, and for a long time. For your victory, your decanus doesn't wake the lot of you for an extra hour the next morning. When you break fast the next day, you think briefly about the evening before, but find yourself far more concerned with your flatbread and hard-egg than the thoughts of the first men you'd ever killed.

If you ever had notions of keeping track, they were thrown by the wayside in a few short weeks, as the numbers began to climb ever higher. After some time, the older men slap pieces of armor against your chest, clap you on the back and say you've done well. You don't feel as if you've done much of anything except what you were told, but that has always seemed to be exactly what made everyone so favorable.

Piece by piece–a chest-guard here, a pauldron there–your armor grows, and as such, the things you own. In the night, you wake to find another boy trying to slip away with your vambrace, and you have your knife to his throat before he can escape. He drops your piece of armor, but the thought of him daring to take something of yours–one of your only four possessions, one of the only things you ever remember owning in life–it enrages you.

You thrust your blade against his head and slice the upper half of his left ear off. "Since we are taking things from one another," you say.

He yelps loud enough to wake the decanus, and before the night is over, he is whipped for thievery, and he thanks the decanus for his mercy. By week's end, every legionary under the camp's centurion knew not to steal from the one they call Vulpes Inculta.

After some time, you have acquired almost a full set of armor, and they have pulled you to the backs of the squads to make room for the new crop of green boys. Some of them can hardly grow hair on their faces, and though they wear the same familiar frozen expressions, you think they are as strong as saplings in the breeze.

That summer, you crush a farming village that was foolish enough to resist the Legion's advances. Though you are just as tired as you always are, it has become easier to mask it. In the lull following battle, with ashes floating on the air from burned fields, and the smell of death on the winds, the decanus calls you over to cull the wounded savages and round up the survivors. You plant your spear in the hearts of a few men who have had limbs hacked off or have deep wounds in their bellies. Later, you find two small children, a boy and a girl, huddled in the tallgrass. You crouch next to them and extend your hand.

"Come willingly," you say, "or perish like the rest."

In tears, the two obey.

"What happens to the girlfolk?" you ask the decanus on the long march home. You'd never known.

"They take them to the priestesses. Maybe she'll grow up to be one if she's smart." He shrugs. "If not, maybe a whore. Maybe a wife. If she's cooperative when she comes of age, and pretty, maybe she'll get to serve a centurion. If she isn't, they'll rape her as many times as it takes to make her docile and toss her to the footsoldiers."

You nod.

The girl is no more than six, and she looks back at you from her place atop the plodding pack brahmin as it lumbers down the road. You do not feel for her. It is no worse than the boy child will get, though different.

When you have impressed enough men, they give you a decanus helm and control of a squad of your own. As a reward, they toss a girl into your tent that night. She trips and falls when they shove her in, and their laughter fades into the night as she picks herself up. She is older than you, but shorter and much slighter. It looks as if you could break her delicate little fingers in yours.

"You're young," she says as you stare at her. "Most men don't make decanus at your age." By now, you have lost track of when everyone stopped calling you boy and started calling you a man. The girl looks down. Her voice is dutiful. "You must be an exceptional warrior."

You glance at your bed. It is the first time you have a private tent of your own. Her voice again brings you out of the thought.

"How old are you?" She flinches and adds, "...might I ask?

You think. "Eighteen, perhaps."

She nods and pulls her tunic off. "Will you have me now, sir?"

Her body is soft and curved and malleable in all the ways that yours is not, and looking at her, you feel yourself grow hard. When you grab her, you see apprehension in her face, but you do not care. You run your hands in her hair and smell the dull soap scent on her neck, and grab and pinch and feel her in every place you care to touch.

You have never had dominion over something, even if for a brief time. You like the softness of her flesh under your strong grip, and the more she cries out at your touches, the harder you squeeze. You like making her issue out her little noises.

The feel of sinking your teeth down on her neck excites you. You enjoy the feeling of her pulse under your tongue, her living, breathing lifeblood. She is so real, and you feel it implicitly in every strong grasp. You do not remember touching someone whom you were not trying to kill.

"Please," she whispers, so quiet it almost didn't exist, and she closes her eyes.

You stop. "Please, what?" There is no mercy in your voice. You do not know what mercy is.

She shakes her head, and you continue laying bites into her flesh.

You feel something natural and primal stir within you, drawing you to her core, and soon you push into her with abandon. With the force you exert on her, you have the thought that her body is less fragile than it looks. By the end, she is crying, though quietly. It does not bother you. You have never cried, and no one would have cared if you had.

She pulls her tunic back on and leaves. You fall asleep without redressing, and have a night more restful than any in recent memory.

You like having your own tent. You now go to strategy meetings in the centurion's pavilion, eat his good food on occasion. You have young men who look to you to give them orders. This is one of the first times you've allowed yourself to take in your surroundings. You still have orders, but now you must make them as well.

At first, you are quiet. You watch the men go about their days in camp. They are not sure what to make of you for a time. Part of you knows you will be punished severely if you are not a successful leader, but the threat is starting to matter less and less. You have never been punished for failure before. This is where your restless mind is useful.

You begin to ask small questions. "_Why does your tunic have an unmended tear in it?" "Why have you let the leather on your belt crack?" "Is this how your time is best spent?"_

They do not know what you mean by it all, but they hear stories of the soldier without a left ear, and they start to pay impeccable detail to their things. Your soldiers are never found to have ill-maintained equipment, they are always clean-shaven, and they fall quiet the moment you enter their tent. And you never had to say a word about it to them.

Your eyes seem made for map-reading, you find when the centurion is planning out raids. He talks about flanking, and cover, and high-ground, and other tactics, and it settles into your brain as if you knew this all along. All the pieces he describes fit together easily, and the seeds start growing on their own in your mind, filling in blanks and reaching further out.

After you lead your men in battle, they stop looking nervous when you enter a room and begin looking proud.

Instead of going where someone points, you now understand the strategic locations you are acquiring. You understand the nearby threats and hazards, terrain and territory, and for a long time, everything you have lived within for well over a decade has taken on a new light.

Rather than simply mimic the details you picked up on in your youth, you suddenly know why so many men did the things they did.

You begin to feel like there is direction and purpose in your actions. When you conquer something you set out to conquer, you begin to feel pride. And you conquer many things. After not too long, you can see from a map that you've marched through much of Arizona.

One day, your forces are driven back by a tribe of four times your number. At camp, though everyone is bruised and bloodied already, you make them choose one from among them, and have the rest kick him until his body turns black. In the morning, he is not there, and the rest have dirt caked on their hands.

After fourteen years in his Legion, you finally meet Caesar on the day of your execution.

Your men follow you without hesitation, and you took them right through a hole in the enemy's line, against your centurion's orders. He wants you dead for it.

You don't know what you expected of Caesar. Some kind of shimmering god, perhaps, for all the talk. He is just a man, as real as you. He has a deliberate way about him. There is no mystery to his feelings on things, and he is more crass than anyone you'd known above a high legionary. You like this about him. There is no hesitation in him when he speaks.

Your centurion condemns you, his frustration growing with Caesar's smile.

"I like his way," Caesar says at the end. "It takes brains and balls."

You smile. "Thank you, my lord."

Your centurion frowns. "He disobeyed orders. In battle. I want him on a cross."

"Not today, I think," Caesar says.

"All due respect, my lord, I don't want him back under my command."

Caesar waves his hand. "Fine. I have something else in mind for this one, then."

And your execution inexplicably becomes a promotion.

You learn much from Caesar in the week you spend in Flagstaff. He means to send you to train under another frumentarius in Colorado. You think you might never have been so far north, or at least, not since you were a child.

"This is not always fighting," he says about it. "Call it diplomacy."

You think on that. "That is a new concept."

"I expect you to find many things, but two at the core. One, those who are exceptionally useful. Two, those who are exceptionally dangerous. Do you think you can do that?"

You remember many years of careful observation. "Yes."

"Good. Those who are useful ought to be recruited to help us, through any means necessary. If they are dangerous, we need information, and we need them distracted, delayed, and demoralized. I need you to become completely adept at this."

"They are meager tribes."

"They are practice for the real war." He looks out at the horizon. "We have not even met the real enemy, and there's much ground to cover before we do."

You nod.

"Learn them," he says. "Learn them and what they are. So well you can walk right past them and they won't even look up."

You are quiet for a moment. This will take a great deal of work. You smile. "As you command, my lord."

You meet the frumentarius in Colorado. You're still unsure what to make of your new role here. You are used to battle and command, and a thousand other intricacies of a life you've lived since you were eight.

"Have you ever walked straight into a tribe without going to war with them?" he asks you when you arrive.

You shake your head.

The man smiles. You find yourself on a ridge overlooking a town in the distance. He tilts his head toward it. "I mean to go in there, make friends and promises, gain their trust and loyalty, and they will listen."

"Is it that simple?" you ask.

"Only if you're intelligent enough." He looks at you with an appraising gaze. "This is far more dangerous than combat, more delicate and vital, and reserved for only those with a sharp mind. Either Caesar sent me someone who can do it, or you'll end up dead soon enough."

You meet his gaze. "Is there a secret to it?"

"When it comes to what to say? Pay close attention, figure out what someone wants most in life, and promise them that, with compelling evidence, manufactured or not."

You sit in thought. "Some would say it's more honorable to meet a man in battle than whisper behind his back."

The frumentarius laughed. "Dull-minded men say that when they are afraid of their own ignorance. They want their enemies to call out where they are because they cannot spot them by their own wits."

Your brow furls in thought, then you smile. "I never thought of it that way."

After not too long, you are on your own, running your own gambits. One time you lead a pack brahmin into a village and act as a lost trader. From this, you become familiar with the layout of the place, their approximate number, and the type of weapons they carry.

Another, you find a war tribe made almost entirely of men. If you help us fight, you tell them, we have many women to give you. Their interest is piqued.

And so go more years in this way. After a time, you start to enjoy the confusion, anger, and sorrow on their faces when they realize your betrayal. You think sometimes it's one thing to grasp victory with the strength of your hands, and another, sweeter thing to coax it out with a silver tongue.

You start to like it when they've heard of you but do not know your face. You like when they turn pallid at the mention of your name.

Their hands do not shake at the mention of battle-hardened centurions. Yet they pass along quiet, fearful whispers of the fox who toasts the village at a feast, and laughs when they all fall poisoned. The man with a smile on his face and a dagger behind his back.

After many years, and many deceptive smiles, empty promises, and countless disguises, Caesar names you leader of the Frumentarii. Soon the scope of your influence is so great that you have to look at a map to plot out all the events that are happening.

You read endless letters from spies around the Four States territory on the state of affairs in their jurisdiction. You send Picus here and Alerio there because you cannot be in so many places at once. You no longer simply work on a task. Now you are creating them.

Now you understand so implicitly how to manipulate. You have studied the NCR dogs for over four years. You understand them like they understand themselves and also know what they really are–the plague rats that are cascading across the west, pushing farther out than they can manage and bringing dissolution as they go.

You can walk among them with many names and faces, and see the things they do.

You have never known anyone to work against each other so often and so easily. Offer one a handful of caps and they'll sell their own sweethearts for a payday. Greed. Money, a high, a fuck. Whatever their vice is, they lose their sense of loyalty for the chance at getting theirs. Animals.

This is the darkness that you live in, so deep and thick as pitch that you've forgotten you've sunken into it. It is very possible you will never emerge from it. In fact, it is probable you will die in it.


	2. Chapter 2

You do not think much of the woman you meet in Nipton. She is an unwitting prophet of your carefully planned sermon, and in your head she runs to the nearest settlement to wail her terror.

But the next time she is in your sight, you doubt that was the reality of what had happened. Her placid face was not painted on to hide her revulsion, for she wears it across the whole of the Wastes.

You see her outside Novac from a long way off, scouting. Your many eyes and ears in the sands tell you this simple woman's name is becoming known in the south. You cannot imagine what is so remarkable about her, but anything the locals gossip about is worth noting, so you decide to keep an ear to the ground in the coming days.

You are passingly aware of her over the ensuing weeks. Each report is farther north than the last, and you are starting to paint a picture of where she is heading.

"She could be valuable to us," Caesar says, when you mention her in your reports.

Indeed, you agree. "She seems resilient." You nod, in thought. "What can I promise her?"

He laughs. "Anything you need to."

You happen to find yourself in New Vegas on business and pass closely by through Freeside. She is a tiny player as far as you are concerned, and you're surprised when you hear the locals there talking about her.

So it is only with mild interest that you hear out the conversations until something in particular strikes your fancy. You hear them say that she has been inside the spire, where no other living soul has ever tread. This, you think, is something interesting.

This Benny you have been tailing is a true man of the Strip, and his plans take on a larger than life nature. He leaves a trail so hot that the dullest of trackers could follow, and his intentions are as clear as the night sky stars. Your many ears heard quickly that he had killed a courier and taken possession of the chip that Caesar so desires, and you sit in the Tops, waiting patiently until you have his rhythm down and you can find the weak spot in his defenses.

He's always surrounded by a troop of men, and though none of them look as if they could stab the broad side of a bighorner, you're not sure you want to make yourself known to the lot of them. So you wait, and watch, and look for your opening.

It is with great surprise that you watch that Wasteland woman stroll in done up like a profligate starlet–as if the muck and sand of the Mojave have never touched her–and strike up a chat with Benny before leading him to a penthouse elevator. Part of you is dumbfounded, and another part livid. She has slipped right into what you had been plotting for days. In mere moments.

You wait for her for hours before she returns. You have time to think, and you know you had underestimated her. So you slip out the doors and meet her on the sidewalk to give her your mark of Caesar.

The corner of her mouth pulls up in a smirk when she sees you.

"It takes a special kind of person to so easily walk in enemy territory."

You smile when she says this on the Strip, but frown as you remember it when she wanders in and out of the Fort.

There have been many times in your life when you watched a plan nearing completion suddenly backslide out of your control, and such is the feeling you get when after a long tour of the Fort, during which she seemed rather attentive, she tells Caesar she'll think about his offer and takes her leave.

You spend increasing amounts of your time paying attention to her comings and goings, and soon, you're watching her yourself and sending your spies to cover your other projects. It seems more likely with each passing day that she will be the key to the standoff throughout the Mojave.

You smile at the thought. One person is simple. You frown. You'd hoped it would be more challenging.

You are alone in the Wastes again. For some reason, you think of long nights, silent but for the desert winds, huddled in a tent with other boys too scared to make a noise. You are crouched in a tangle of weeds and discarded tires by a rest stop far from settlement fires and prying eyes.

The woman is nearby; you know this from her patterns. She does not often vary from her rounds, and it has been many long nights up and down the Long 15, following her unfaltering route. A night in Primm, a stop off in Goodsprings. You could set a watch by her.

You hear footsteps around the backside of the station and you freeze. Your hand is on your weapon and you turn to look over your shoulder, careful not to make a sound.

Someone peeks around the corner for the briefest moment, but the night is black and far from city lights, and it is impossible to make out.

After a pause, a voice. "I'm not here to fight you."

It's her.

"What are you doing here?" you ask when she steps around the edge of the building. Your hand stays on your weapon until you remember you're not trying to threaten her.

Her voice is level. "Watching you watching me."

You swallow. "I am not watching you." A lie. "I have interests in this area."

"I've been following the same route over and over," she continues. "Waiting until I could find Caesar's spy trailing behind." She looks you over. "I'd figured you'd send someone. Not do it yourself."

You remain silent.

"Well," she says. "Now we know where each other are. Might as well make camp for the night."

You think perhaps she is joking, but she speaks of a campsite not far away, beckons you with the wave of a hand, and sets off through the brush toward the hills.

It is simple, and you bristle with suspicion. Nothing good was ever so easy.

There is something about the world out here, in this open, defenseless night. She starts to build a fire. You are unsure of her motives but you want to know where it's going so you help her.

She cooks a meal, not unimpressive for Wasteland fare, bespeaking a person accustomed to the wilds, and shares it with you. "You've been in the Legion a long time," she says, sure of the statement.

You nod. "Since childhood."

She looks you up and down. "How old were you?"

You think. "Perhaps eight."

"At what point in your life did you choose it?"

"I don't understand."

"Did you choose Caesar when you were a child soldier, or when you were an adult? At what time did you consciously make a choice to be loyal to him?"

You are silent. You want to give her an answer, as it seems this is some sort of test, but it's hard to think. "When I was eighteen," you say, for want of something, anything.

"And what was it? The thing that made you choose after a decade?"

You frown at her. "I..." You pause, thinking.

When she sees you have no answer, she pushes. "If they had let you run from your village would you have?"

"Yes, I was a child."

"And during your training?"

"I didn't understand the importance of it at the time."

"What I'm looking for is when did it change? When exactly did you go from a captive to a perpetrator?"

"I don't know," you say, though maybe you shouldn't have.

The firelight is harsh on her face, accentuating the frown.

She climbs into your lap without warning and kisses you, not hesitantly, but with a kind of desperation behind it that you never knew could be in a kiss. When you feel her fingertips dig into your arms, you imagine her clinging to you with all the strength in her pitiful profligate heart.

The opportunity presenting itself opens a wealth of possibilities. She is wanton and willing, and you see your web spinning already behind your eyes while she is pulling off her shirt.

She is not yours to grab and pinch and bend, but a tool for Caesar, so you keep your touch as light and kind as you dare. Her lips are hot and pliant, and her grasp strong. She is not stiff and detached, and she arches into your grasp rather than away.

She is different from what you are used to, so you follow her movements and press where she pushes your hand, and oblige when she coos quiet demands.

You are tired, but in the time it takes to fall asleep, your mind is swimming with thoughts of how to use this newfound weakness to your advantage.

When you wake in the morning, she is gone. Her pattern broken, she is nowhere to be found for two tedious weeks.

You find her north of Novac, in a campsite not far from the road. She does not run from you but greets you with a simple wave of her hand and the quiet statement of your name.

You step closer, brush her hair back behind her ear. You imagine you can feel hope in her heart cupped in your hands, and you will fatten it up and bleed it dry for king and country.

When you try to pull her closer she shakes her head, and you feel your plans disintegrate through your fingers.

You had not expected to want to feel her again as strongly as it hits you in the gut at this moment. "What's wrong?"

"At the campsite," she begins, but pauses, looking for the words. Her voice isn't warm to you. It isn't desperate. "It wasn't what I expected from you."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"The way you act is a different person than who you were that night. I don't know if you were purposefully altering your behavior or you're just a more enthusiastic soldier than you are a man, but I had just expected something different."

Her lack of approval is disappointing to you. You had done it in the name of Caesar, to make her more favorable to you. But underneath that, somehow, there is something even more crippling about it.

You are not so prideful that you do not retreat in the face of loss, so you decide that twisting her feminine emotions might not be the best course of action. You turn, and are gone from her sight within moments.

You have other webs that need tending so you spend your time on them, all the while trying to piece together some new sort of strategy. Caesar expects progress and you have little to report yet, and that thought will not leave your mind.

During the day you spend free moments between your duties thinking of other ways to appeal to her. You try to catalogue all that you know about the woman in an effort to pick at her desires and twist her into what you need. During the day you are able to make up plans and alternate plans to try out on her.

At times it occurs to you that you haven't the vaguest of ideas where she had come from, or why she has taken this world up into her hands. She is not motivated by money or power. You have, at times, met enemies that operate on these higher planes, in the realm of honor and glory. They are more difficult to twist, but it has never stopped you before. During the day, you are replaying the events of every plot and plan you've ever enacted, looking for clues to proceed with.

But at night, you are awake long swaths of time, wondering what she meant.

What is it that she believes you to be, you wonder. And how is it different from your actions that night? The answers to those questions will illuminate who she is, you tell yourself. It is your only real clue you have at the moment into what she is looking for, and the answer is tangled up in that, if you are clever enough to find it.

You find her in a house north of Vegas, and she does not betray any movement inside until you have made yourself known by calling for her through the door. She lets you in, and is as friendly as always. She offers you something to drink and sits with you in the den, making small talk.

"What did you mean?" you say after some time. "When you said it wasn't what you expected?"

She sighs, stands up, and paces a few steps before leaning against the wall, thinking. "You were… passive. And kind of timid. Fumbling." She shakes her head.

You don't like her response. "You should be glad I was kind," you tell her. "You nearly stumbled into an adder's den."

She does not balk, and her expression remains even. "What makes you think I had expected kind from you?"

Her words surprise you. "I don't understand."

"The man I met at Nipton was not kind. He did not possess a gentle nature and I knew that from the start."

"You don't know what you're asking for."

"Try me," she says.

You wish you had said more, warned her again, or thought of what she and her loyalty meant to Caesar. But, by the time you have the thought, your mouth is already on hers, and you've pushed her against the wall. You know if this sours her on the Legion, it will have been an irreparable failure on your part, but it feels too good to grab her hair in your fist.

You'll just do it for one moment, you think. Just to feel it, then you'll stop yourself. But one moment passes into another and you're still tugging at her scalp and pinning her between yourself and the wall. You can feel her breathing–ribcage moving–against your chest, and her hands have a vice grip on your clothing.

Those same hot lips meet your own, her tongue slips past your teeth and touches yours.

You rarely touch other people and something wellsprings from deep inside, urging you to test her body the way yours had long been tested. To prod, and pinch, and grasp, and tangle.

You need to know how far her neck can bend, and feel the sweat well up on her brow as you work.

The cause and effect is maddening–all the reactions you've learned are lost on her. She sighs where others had whimpered. Moans where others had cried. The pleas for mercy had always meant nothing to you. What was yours, you took. But she pulls you closer, and something in that simple gesture latches into your gut and makes your careful mind lose footing.

You know what it is like to enact your will on others, but you have never, in this way, felt someone pushing back.

You like to move her and contort her and find her straining points, and you like when you can feel her resisting her limits. The more she resists you, the harder you push back, and the harder you push back, the louder she cries out and digs her fingers into your arms and back. She wastes no time in trying to remove your clothing, and her lips are ravenous in their quest to cover the exposed skin. You feel as if you are fighting to draw her attention away from touching you. You see brief moments where she loses concentration and is lost under your touch, and you want to be in control of that.

"What did you expect from me?"

"No mercy," she says breathlessly into your mouth, and bites your lip.

You feel yourself pull her closer to your chest, as painfully close as you can manage until she gasps for breath. Her face flushes very suddenly, and you think she might push away.

"Give me all your strength," she says. "I can take it."

She is as hard as the Wastes that she came from. "It will crush you," you whisper.

"It will," she says and sadly, the first show of emotion that has crept into her voice.

But you won't crush her because Caesar needs her. And because something inside that you don't understand and resent wants to sate your lust with her over and over.

You take her with little warning, but she is slick and hot and more than ready. It is something you don't remember ever feeling, and the needful groan she hisses out against your collarbone is something you know for certain you've never felt.

She does not want your mercy. You have none to give.

Her body is pliant to you, but at the same time, she is stronger than those who came before her. Though you move and bend her to your every whim, her enthusiasm never falters. Just when you know you must be hurting her, she grabs your forearm and asks for it harder.

For the first time, you see in her the same resilience you see in yourself. The only thing the both of you have is callous desperation.

Her body grips you tight in a way you've never felt. With each thrust, her moans become higher and higher pitched until she's not even making a sound. Her lips form words and pleas but are silent. This depth of desperation in her eyes, her body–you've only ever before felt it in others begging for their lives. It is the loss of control, reaching deep from a place of weakness. You know it well: brief moments where humans experience the complete loss of self and are left with nothing but inborn instinct.

She says your name in that throaty, desperate voice, and suddenly you have to bury your face into her neck lest she see the same kind of weakness in you. But you know it only lasts a moment, although it feels like a lifetime in your head.

Maybe now, you think. Maybe now you might have her. But she smiles and lays a soft bite on your shoulder, and you stay quiet while she dresses. You don't even say a word when she leaves with a soft, "See you in the Wastes."

She is something new. Something you never knew existed.

You have yet to start to bend her, because you are still trying and testing her limits.

You never go to her with the intention of taking her again, and she never greets you with a look of longing, but with the same familiar nod as if you've never been inside her. That is what tempts you, you think. The nagging, intrusive thought bouncing around your head that you hate when it never affects her. That her eyes tell a story of covered up truths.

But you know. You know the feel of her breasts, and the sound she makes when you drag your tongue behind her ear, and the heady smell of sex that fills the room. And you want to see all that in her eyes when she looks at you. So you take her in your arms and push her down on the bed. Hold her arms pinned to her sides so that she couldn't escape if she wanted to. Kiss and bite your way from her collarbone to her mouth.

And then, there it is. That look in her eyes, like she finally recognizes you. All the lust and vexation and greed that you feel in yourself reflected back from her dilated pupils.

And every time comes with this new little caveat–that next time will be when you start to forge her into Caesar's servant. This time is for you. Next time will be for Caesar.

Because this time you want to dedicate the whole of your attention to the strength in her hand on your forearm, and the rocking of her hips as she pulls you closer. Watching her face while you fuck her because there is something in her expression of pleasure that calls to you in a place deep inside that has never seen the light of day. Out of all the darkness over your world, there is something that has begun to burn in the pit of it all, casting off a faint but consuming glow.

Every night your bed is cold, you feel yourself grow hard at the memory of her throaty moans, and skin moist with sweat, and the desperation in the whole of her body as she pulls at you, and moves with you. If there was ever a single thing that came as naturally to you as war, it is her.

Caesar says she will be his, or she will soon be dead.

You nod. "Yes, my lord."

"You can see as clear as I," he says, gazing out over the domain that will soon be his. "She is a threat to everything we have built if she will not join us." His eyes rest on the lights burning out of the spire far off on the horizon. "And it falls to you to conquer or kill her."

"It will be done." Your voice is as dutiful as ever, but there is some new, frightful melancholy clouding your head. You wish you could feel as little for her as you do when he calls for the death of villages.

"I remember long ago, I told you that your training would be for the real enemy." He looks at you, and for the first time in your life, you are worried that he will see something in you that should not exist. "Welcome to that moment."


End file.
